Baby you're the best... King Kong
With the Oscars and their seemingly interminable build-up now out of the way, many film fans will be breathing a sigh of relief at the lessening frequency of usages of "The Best".
Despite the intrinsic interest in the fact that many of the award-scooping films of 2005 were constructively concerned with a wider-than-usual range of social and moral issues, the sense of monotonous consensus among the voting communities was so overwhelming that the last-minute Oscar shock seemed almost engineered.
Right on time, the 10th instalment of the annual Empire Awards bash cocked a snook at the Oscars' right-on fare by handing the major awards to King Kong and Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith.
The difference, of course, is that the voting for the Empire awards takes place on the vulgar side of the great Us and Them divide.
For some, there's nothing more ridiculous than basing awards on already overemployed public opinion. For others, the ridicule attaches instead to the idea that the academicians, guild members and critics might really know any better when it comes to sorting the wheat from the chaff.
The underlying question - whose best is better? - is one of the oldest in the book of taste. And all the while, the number of people paid to dispute such matters has increased exponentially.
To my mind, good criticism - whether of films or of the arts more broadly - doesn't attempt to provide a definitive assessment of a work. Rather, it operates by binding a set of observations and evaluations to features of the work so that they become almost part of the fabric of the work itself. The mark of good criticism, in other words, is that it gives - in the case of films - viewers more to watch, making the cinematic experience a richer one.
So in answer to the question, whose better is best, I'd say... Yours? Mine? Perhaps you should decide...
